Yesterday, I went to Nine Mile Prairie for my first Artist’s Date (more on that later).  Nine Mile Prairie is basically a piece of land (230 acres) that has never been plowed.  It’s covered with natural prairie grasses and native trees and is one of the largest of its kind in the Midwest. It strikes me as funny that I’ve lived in this area for most of my life and I’d never been there!  Maybe if Laura Ingalls Wilder were hanging out there, I would have made a point to visit her sometime within the past 35 years that I’ve lived here.

After dutifully writing out my morning pages, I put on my hiking shoes (and am sure glad I did!), grabbed my trusty camera, and out the door I went. I didn’t even take the dog or my cell phone! While I was there, I walked along the path and waded into the tallgrass to see what it was like.  I also took a few photos (114) and tried to imagine what it would have been like to be a Pioneer, bouncing along in your covered wagon, and having this be the only thing you see for miles and miles.

Even the way the cut the grass for paths reminded me of ruts made from wagon wheels, though more uniform and less muddy.  I covered about 1/3 of the land, following the path they had cut. There’s a big “lake”… well… what used to be a lake according to the map and the watermarks on the trees. Right now, it’s just a big divot with thick dried up mud in the center.

Here are some hoof prints from the local deer.

A bit further on, I discovered a ravine to explore. Of course there were footholds carved out (barely) and some loose rope tied to steel poles along the side to use a handrail, so someone must have discovered it before I did.  I didn’t really trust the setup, but used it anyway.  I climbed down into it, and it was maybe five feet wide at its base.  I took a few photos, looked around, listened for animals that I swear were staring at me, and then fought my way back to the top the way I came.  THEN I realized that it was a dead end. So I went back to the edge of it and looked across and sure enough, there was another “stairway” on the other side and the path continued on.  So back down I went and up the other embankment.

After stopping to study some Milkweed going to seed, the path wound around the Airport Authority’s fence line and I ended up back where I started.

I was out there for about an hour and a half and boy can I feel it in my legs today!  It was about 70 degrees yesterday, so once the clouds cleared a bit, it was really nice out there.  It’s sunny now and if I had the car here, I would be really tempted to go back and try my hand at more photos!  It’s funny what you see in them once you see them enlarged on your screen.

This little field trip is part of the program called The Artist’s Way that I just started.  It’s to help me get in touch with my creative side a bit more.  My work on my family tree does feel creative, but it’s also giving me new ideas on how to pursue it further.  I want to incorporate more storytelling into it, but find myself blogging in more of a fact-after-fact way.  I want to add more photos, too, to show what it was like to live back then.  Things looked vastly different and even day to day living was all-encompassing.  Already, I’m starting to feel my brain loosen up and the words are flowing better.  Hopefully this trend will continue and you’ll have easier reading from here on out.

I had a bit of a panic attack on Friday!  I decided to clean up the categories that I use in my blog entries… delete any subcategories… use just surnames instead of full names… centuries instead of decades… you can see my handiwork by clicking the dropdown arrow for “Categories” over there on the right margin.  —>

So after I switched my categories and got them the way I wanted them, I went through each post and reassigned categories to them.  I was moving right along until I got to the entries that I wrote about my Dad… in particular, this post: http://blog.kathywaitmyers.com/2009/07/30/taking-thursday-off-kinda/

It took me right back to the week that I wrote my first Tombstone Tuesday post about my Dad.  It took me a week to come up with that entry because it dug up all of the emotions I felt when he died.  It was an emotional rollercoaster!  So I took a big breath and went to the post right before that one:  http://blog.kathywaitmyers.com/2009/07/29/wordless-wednesday-dad-and-shipmates-during-korean-war/

I sat there for a minute admiring the photo, wishing that he didn’t have such a weird look on his face and that his eyes were open.  He was probably trying to give the guy in front of him “rabbit ears” right before they snapped the photo.  haha…  Then I went to the previous entry, which I knew would be this one: http://blog.kathywaitmyers.com/2009/07/29/tombstone-tuesday-roy-frederick-sonny-wait-jr-1931-2004/

…………….. and it wasn’t there ……………..

The whole world stopped.  I stared at my screen for what seemed like an hour.  Then I started talking to myself….

oh my gosh. oh my gosh. where is it? where is Dad’s post? oh my gosh. oh my gosh. oh my gosh. okay…. breathe… okay… THINK!!!  where is it? what happened to it?  oh my gosh. Check your old blog!  Okay…. crap!!!!  It’s not there!!!  Where are the rest of my entries?????  There’s like a whole week missing!!!  THINK!!  THINK!!  Ok!!  Check the blogger blog that you posted last week when you freaked out about wordpress.com!!  Okay!!!  It’s there!!!  They’re all there!!!  Now how do you get it back over to your new blog. Oh!  That’s right!  I exported the old blog, so that file is here somewhere.  Where is it… where is it…  OK!  Found it!  Now, IMPORT!!!  Whew… okay… it’s there… they’re all there now… I CAN’T BELIEVE THAT WORDPRESS DELETED TWELVE OF MY BLOG ENTRIES!!!!!  Now I know why I freaked out about them last Friday and was compelled to move my blog somewhere else!  My Dad was probably pushing me to export it so his information wouldn’t be lost.  Thank you Dad!!  Thank you Universe!!  Thank you, whatever made me freak out and move my blog twice in a week!!   

Suddenly, all of my “what if’s” have come to the forefront of my mind.  What if my hard drive crashes? What if I accidentally delete something I’m not supposed to?  What if I scan all of these pictures and then something happens and I lose the files?  What if, what if, what if??

So I’m turning over a new leaf!  I’ve decided that I need to export my blog WAY more often. Weekly during Monday Madness?  After every post?  I haven’t decided.  What do you think?  I remember seeing something that Thomas MacEntee from Geneabloggers posted a while ago about keeping backups of your blog.  I’ll have to dig that up and see what he said about it (my brain was full when I read it the first time)!

I also spent the weekend researching portable external hard drives so I can back up my hard drive regularly.  After looking at a bunch of them, I decided the Western Digital Elements 500 GB Portable External Hard Drive.  According to the techy guys at Amazon, it’s probably my best bet.  Enough memory to last me a while and I guess the NTFS format is what I need so I can copy folders and files that are over 4GB.  That’ll come in handy the next time AnceStories hosts Scanfest!!  It’s a little more expensive than the desktop version, but it’s only 6oz instead of 3lbs so I’ll be more likely to pack it up to take it to my next family reunion.  I even followed through and bought it!!  I’ll let you know how my first backup goes!  Can’t wait!!

Hey!  I’m back!  I don’t know if anyone noticed, but it’s been over a week since I last posted a blog.  It’s not that I haven’t wanted to write, but that I was having a blog-dentity crisis!  I was blogging through wordpress.com on one of their little starter accounts, but every time I tried to add a new widget (those little buttons on the right), it would error out and break the code. 

I grew envious of my blogging friends pretty blogs on blogger.com, so I started moving over there.  But then I couldn’t find a design that I liked. Hm.

Then my friend Kevin V in New York  suggested that I just get my own domain and host wordpress.ORG on it.  Ok!  Now we’re talking!

The I saw that Doteasy was having a domain name sale, so I bought my own domain name! $2.95 later, and  WWW.KATHYWAITMYERS.COM was born!!

Then I had to figure out where to host it.  Doteasy has free hosting, BUT not if you need these things called “php” and “MySQL” whatever that is.

See… I’m NOT the webmaster type.  I can usually figure things out, but when it comes to programming and moving files from here to there, I’m absolutely lost. 

So I went on to Wordpress.org and they suggested six different companies that you can use to do your hosting with.  I checked them all out… thought about it… tried to work it into my budget… and then checked them all out again!

I wound up going with Dream Host  because they had the best price.  lol!  They offer everything that I could possibly use now, plus I’ll have room to grow my website as my needs change.  AND!  They also have an AWESOME anniversary sale going on right now, where you pay $9.24 for the WHOLE YEAR (a savings of $110… it’s normally $8.95/month).  When you go to their website, the message is right there taking up the whole screen.  Plus, you get the first two weeks free.  Yay!

My biggest sigh of relief came when I used their “one click installer” for Wordpress blogs.  Amazingly, it actually worked the first time.  Before lunch, I had my blog up and running and on the web again and imported the posts from my old blog and everything!  I can’t tell you how impressed I was at that.  Over the past week, I found a template that I liked, but couldn’t figure out for the life of me how to get it uploaded on another webhosting company’s site.  Sooooo frustrating. 

Now I think I’ve got it!  I have a pretty new face to my blog… I’m in love with green and brown right now!  I have all of my little widgets lined up over there on the right margin!  Including the badge for my new WAIT HERITAGE group to share information and get to know my genealogy loving cousins!  My website name is MY name!!  I have to tell you… I was a little afraid that when I switched my website address, no one would be able to find me again. 

So!!!  Bookmark my new site!!  Add it to your favorites!!  Subscribe to it via email!!  Follow me on Facebook!!  Follow me on Twitter!!

(no pressure) 

www.kathywaitmyers.com

WHEW!!!  Can I get back to researching and blogging now?  Thanks!!!  =)

Kathy